CHOYAM (what sounds like instant noodles but isn't)

The Catastrophic History of You and Me
By: Jess Rothenberg
Reported by: Julianna Helms
Source: ARC from trade
Release date: Already released

Dying of a broken heart is just the beginning.... Welcome to forever.

BRIE'S LIFE ENDS AT SIXTEEN: Her boyfriend tells her he doesn't love her, and the news breaks her heart—literally.

But now that she's D&G (dead and gone), Brie is about to discover that love is way more complicated than she ever imagined. Back in Half Moon Bay, her family has begun to unravel. Her best friend has been keeping a secret about Jacob, the boy she loved and lost—and the truth behind his shattering betrayal. And then there's Patrick, Brie's mysterious new guide and resident Lost Soul . . . who just might hold the key to her forever after.

With Patrick's help, Brie will have to pass through the five stages of grief before she's ready to move on. But how do you begin again, when your heart is still in pieces?

-Summary from Goodreads
Mrs.Nelson's||Barnes & Noble||Amazon||The Book Depository

Brie died of a broken heart, and she left me with one, too.


This book was definitely original and compassionate, but Brie has a voice that rivaled a five-year-old. Everything Was Capitalized and Of Course OMG Abbreviations! But this book--my goodness--made me feel so bipolar, it was like slowly inching up on a roller-coaster, only to have the ride be stuck at the highest point, staring down at a trail of steepness below. Brie frustrated me and made me cry. She made me want to throw the book against a wall and hug it so fiercely my ribs hurt. She makes immature decisions--and talks almost nothing like a teenager, if you ask me (a teenager. Yup. Hi there!)--but the things she goes through are so heartbreaking, I broke down into terrible sobs. I don't even know what to think.

This book is cool, though. It's broken into parts--each one being a stage of grief. Every chapter is a song title (I didn't even know until a friend pointed out that Total Eclipse of the Heart was, in fact, a song, and not a supremely cool original chapter title). And though Brie sometimes annoyed me so much, and I would have smoke steaming out from my ears if I was in a cartoon, she did make me laugh.

You know, I think I know how she managed to infuriate me and break me at the same time. Brie knows she's done wrong. She's so terrified of her own mistakes that her fears become my own, and she's so afraid that she won't ever be able to fix her own self that I am surrounded by these eternal walls of impossibility, suffocating and choking and horrifying.

Brie backed herself into a steel prison, and it's not only catastrophic, it's claustrophobic. (ha, get it? Get it?)

This book has surprises, turns, and zero explanations. And it's not even the most entertaining book of all time, considering Brie's childish voice. But here's what I'll tell you: The Catastrophic History of You and Me will find a part of you so deeply hidden--so scarce and afraid--and yank it out, fast, so that you won't even realize what happened until you feel this gigantic hole in your chest. It'll stitch you back together, one attempt at a time.

But no matter how many times it tries to save its own destruction, you won't be the same. (Whether that's meant in a good way or bad way, though, that's up for you to see.)

P.S. CHOYAM is an abbreviation of The Catastrophic History of You and Me, in case you haven't figured it out yet. :) Ha, abbreviations, get it? (I am so full of bad jokes today.)